A lack of posting here is maybe a good thing. I’ve been busy. The end of last year concluded with me riding each of my 5 bikes around some of my favorite locales in San Francisco (after riding each bike >1,000 miles each in 2011). Since then I have put in my 10 longest rides since I started keeping track. A few extended weekend tours and a good amount of taking the slicks to dirt have kept me busy through the summer.

One selection from the road (near Waldport, OR)

For now the big news is that I decided to join the Mad Alchemy / Verge Grassroots Cycloross team. I guess I won’t get to enjoy the team tent, but hopefully the power of embrocation will be sufficient. Anyway, cyclocross training is underway, and hopefully I’ll start updating this more…

Early in the year, I decided that I wanted to do more in 2011 than 2010. I also wanted to keep doing a lot of different kinds of riding and make the most of my bike collection. Hence my 5 grand goal – 1000 miles on 5 different bikes. One bike to look pretty and have hard to replace components, one to carry all sort of stuff, one bike to not have anything stolen off it, one to ride on anything, and a last bike to ride anything with a single gear.

Can you guess which is which (note: I snapped a frame this year)

Well I did it today. I am super proud to make this happen and possibly more on that later. More importantly, a New Years Eve day extravaganza of my favorite SF rides is in the works – likely culminating in a butter lap with my panniers full of beer (at least to start). Come join me.

The further I get behind on my race reports for the season, the more I come to realize there’s not always a story in a race report. People like stories. At least they’d prefer them I’d guess. So conflicted about writing race reports when my hearts not in it, or I don’t have anything interesting to say. Ah fuck it, here’s for posterity…

One morning last week I was hailed by a guy with a broken chain and stopped to help since I had a tool and he didn’t. “That guy” turned out to be the head of Chrome Bags, so my good citizenship was rewarded by his generosity in the form of shoes:

My return to Sierra Point was two years in the making. My initial experience there was in my first year racing. The result – a DNS. The rare abbreviation: did not start. Yeah, endo-ing in the pre-ride is pretty pro. This time around, I raced probably one of my cleanest races to date. Certainly my best single speed effort. Of course that doesn’t necessarily translate into placing. Not that it really matters.

So I led the Cat C field after the first lap and managed to get 4th overall at Stafford Lake. I know what you’re thinking – “How is that possible? Aren’t you slow?” That’s what I thought too, but with just the right conditions strange things can happen: even I can be a sandbagger.

If you’re going to be a sandbagger, make sure it looks like you’re working hard (photo by Veronika Lenzi)

I don’t know what it is about Halloween weekend that means cross cranks the suffering up to 11. With the past couple years up in Astoria for a mudfest at the Cross Crusade series, this year promised to be drier with a trip down to Santa Cruz for Surf City. Luckily, relatively dry courses can still be painful.